CACTUS FLAGELLIFORMIS-CREEPINU CEREUS. 



CLASS, tCOSANDRIA J ORDER, MONOGYNIA. 

 NATURAL ORDER, CACTACE.E. 



GEW. CHAR* Calyx, superior, cut in many parts, piled over 

 each other. Petals, numerous, in many series, outer ones, smaller. 

 Stigma many cleft. Fruit, a berry, one celled, many seeded, 

 umbilicate. SPEC. CHAR. Creeping, rootftig, hispid; with ten 

 angles. 



Lindley remarks, that these plants from the profusion of large, 

 richly colored flowers, with which their species are loaded, have 

 given the conservatories an air of magnificence which was quite 

 unknown till they were introduced. The species are in all cases 

 succulent, and with the exception of the Pereskias, destitute* of 

 leaves, in whose room the stem is either green, or leaf like, or, at 

 least, covered over w r ith a green integument, which has the 

 structure of the pulpy part of a leaf, and like it executes the office 

 of respiration. They are all destitute of true leaves, except when 

 they are just beginning to grow. Just at that time they do indeed 

 produce little succulent bodies, which we know to be rudiments of 

 of leaves ; but such parts drop off soon after they germinate, and 

 the only representatives they leave behind are the stiff, hooked, 

 spines, with which so many species are covered. The parts which 

 are mistaken for leaves in the Indian Fig, or some of the more 

 common species of Cereus, are only the flattened joints of the stem. 



